The Classic Bunker Mentality and Totalitarian Control of the Media from Lenin to Watergate

Paranoia |

The Four to Five Staffers “Who Actually Speak To” Hillary Clinton Are Stuck In “Bunker Mentality”

– RealClearPolitics | May 2016

“In a conversation with the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Friday, former executive editor and co-founder of Politico Jim VandeHei opens up about the real problem inside the Hillary Clinton campaign: The candidate is isolated from reality, surrounded by a group of 4-5 yes-men who “think she is always right” and “love her,” making them unwilling to explain to her the seriousness of the situation surrounding her homebrew email server.

“They all have the bunker mentality,” he said about the Clinton team. “There’s four or five people who can really speak into her life. It’s always been the truth about her. There’s not a large group of people and they love her, and think she’s always right, and clearly no one is saying to do what you’re saying she should do — [tell the truth],” he explained.”

Hillary surrounds herself with sycophants with a bunker mentality. That is dangerous

– Democratic Underground

“Doesn’t matter how smart they are.

The second thing that becomes clear is that these security experts ran into a brick wall of longtime Clinton aides whose priority was not security, but rather her desire for privacy and convenience. “From the earliest days,” writes O’Harrow Jr., “Clinton aides and senior officials focused intently on accommodating the secretary’s desire to use her private email account” and in so doing “neglected repeated warnings about the security of the BlackBerry.” In August 2011, when the State Department’s executive secretary Stephen Mull broached the idea of replacing Clinton’s personal Blackberry with a “Department issued” one, Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff and close personal aide, Huma Abedin, replied that the “state blackberry…doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

To longtime Hillary Clinton observers, all this sounds distressingly familiar. In the literature about Clinton’s career, the insularity of her staff is a recurring theme. In his biography, A Woman in Charge, Carl Bernstein quotes Mark Fabiani, a lawyer in the Clinton White House, as observing that, “the kind of people that were around her were yes people. She had never surrounded herself with people who could stand up to her, who were of a different mind.”

….Continue reading @ http://www.democraticunderground.com/

Anger |

“Former Secret Service officer Gary J. Byrne, author of Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate, joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Tuesday’s Breitbart News Dailyto discuss the state of the presidential race after the second debate.

“Voting for Hillary Clinton is, to me, a complete mistake, and here’s why: I started out in the U.S. Air Force. I had to pass a battery of tests to get to the point where, in the U.S. Air Force, I was allowed to protect our nuclear arsenal. I then went on to become a Secret Service uniformed division officer for 12 years, where I had to take a polygraph test. In eight out of those twelve years, I protected the Clintons, and the Hillary Clinton I know is a complete pathological liar,” he said.

“Really, if you’re honest with yourself and you pay attention to some of the politics that goes on, you’ve seen this yourself,” said Byrne. “She never displays any kind of leadership. I cite many examples in my book where she gets so angry, she has the people that work for her, they’re terrified of her.”

Deception |

WikiLeaks: New York Times Propped Up Clinton, Subverted Sanders

The Times doesn’t seem to employ anyone willing to question the status quo

“The New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton twice, but prior to that—even preceding the Democratic primary in New York—the institution served as an extension of the Clinton campaign.

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi pointed out their bias in March 2016, after an article published in the Times was severely edited to remove any semblance of positive imagery in the portrayal of Bernie Sanders’ role in Congress. Taibbi dubbed Sanders “the amendment King” in 2005 for how working with both sides of Congress to add important amendments to legislation—often successfully. His work ethic, honesty, and experience earned him respect from both Republicans and Democrats, despite serving as an Independent.”

Wikileaks: Democrat-Media Complex Hall of Fame (So Far)

– Breitbart

“The latest batch of Wikileaks emails reveals further collusion between mainstream media journalists and outlets on the one hand, and the Hillary Clinton campaign on the other.

Andrew Breitbart called that collusion the “Democrat-media complex,” and it first emerged in 2008 with the exposure of “JournoList,” whose members discussed accusing conservative writers of racism to distract from the Jeremiah Wright scandal. Wikileaks proves: “JournoList” lives on. Here are the winners thus far.

Louise Mensch, Heat Street: Mensch runs the Heat Street blog, which ostensibly opposes identity politics, “safe spaces,” and “social justice warriors.” However, she reached out to the Hillary Clinton campaign about creating an ad that advocates for the former Secretary of State based solely on her gender (“… and the last woman says, ‘It’s our time. I’m with her.’”). The proposed ad found its way to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s inbox. (He liked the idea.)

Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post: The Post‘s White House bureau chief tried to alert Podesta that his name was going to come up in the context of an upcoming story: “I just wanted to make sure John Podesta had a heads up that his name will be in a story concerning the White House’s ethics policy, which could run on Monday … This is just one line, pretty low down in the piece, but I don’t want him to be surprised since we never discussed it face-to-face,” she wrote.

John Harwood, CNBC/New York Times: Harwood was the moderator for a Republican primary debate in the fall of 2015, but was constantly emailing Podesta to offer political support, even congratulating him on Hillary Clinton’s primary wins. He also gloated in one email about asking Donald Trump provocative questions in the debate. And Harwood also used his exchanges with Podesta to minimize the Clinton e-mail scandal and Clinton Foundation scandal.

Haim Saban, Univision: The Hollywood mogul and Clinton donor also owns Spanish-language giant Univision, and was exposed by Wikileaks steering the campaign into doing things that the network might cover favorably, or to her advantage. As NewsBusters notes, Saban requested, and received, a call from Podesta, which then shaped campaign media strategy about Clinton’s reaction to Trump’s controversial statements about illegal immigrants from Mexico.

Rebecca Quick, CNBC: The co-host of Squawk Box and a co-moderator with Harwood, Quick promised to support Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services who was appointed after Kathleen Sebelius resigned in the wake of the failed launch of healthcare.gov. She wrote, in a message to debt commission co-chair Erskine Bowles, that she “will make sure to defend [Burwell] when things get further along in the nomination process.”

Donna Brazile, CNN: Brazile is the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, but when she was still a CNN contributor, she managed to pass a question to the Clinton campaign that was to be asked at a March 2016 town hall between Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Both Brazile and CNN deny it — with CNN blaming a third party — but Brazile sent an email: “From time to time I get the questions in advance.” The question was indeed asked.

Nick Kristof, New York Times: One email to Podesta reveals that Kristof gave Bill Clinton’s staff the questions that he would later be asking in an interview at the Foursquare Conference. Kristof, a columnist, is not exactly anyone’s idea of an impartial journalist, but since he is associated with the New York Times, presumably conference attendees, who are media professionals, expected some semblance of an actual interview, not a canned presentation with Kristof as a prop.

Mark Leibovich, New York Times: Leibovich interviewed Hillary Clinton, then submitted the result to her staff for edits, one email chain reveals. As Breitbart News’ Dustin Stockton notes: “The Clinton campaign vetoed nearly the entire interview, but even in the portions they did approve for publication, they had Mark Leibovich edit out a mention of Sarah Palin, apparently at Hillary’s personal request.” The apparent “joke” involved Palin cooking moose stew.

Historical Parallels to Taking of Power from 1917 to 2016 –

History of Russian Journalism

– Miami University

“From Revolution to Glasnost: Soviet Press from 1917-1984

A free and independent press does not have a very long history in Russia. Control of the media by the government dates back to the very beginning of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks curtailed freedom of speech and press in Russia from the very beginning.

One of the most important initial decrees passed by the Soviet of People’s Commissars and signed by Vladimir Lenin October 27, 1917 was the Decree on the Press (Murray 2). This Decree essentially outlawed newspapers that published views opposed to the October Revolution. Claiming such papers to be tsarist reactionaries, the communists closed 319 newspapers from 1917-1918 (Murray 5-6). Additional measures soon followed. A tribunal was established in 1917 to investigate and suppress bourgeois newspapers. Later in 1917, a state monopoly on advertising was instituted, depriving most papers of revenue (McNair 36).

A number of controls existed which allowed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to tightly control media content (McNair 49) The government (and therefore the party) controlled rights to licensing and financing papers. Appointment to high-level media jobs, such as editors, was controlled by the CPSU and based on purely political and ideological considerations.

Contrary to a common belief that the Soviet Union widely practiced censorship, after an initial period of censorship and repression under Lenin and Stalin, the true controls over a free press were embodied in the close relationship between party officials and the media. Editors willingly made for compliant news outlets that followed the party line.

Controls over freedom of speech were not just limited to the press. Joseph Stalin was particularly infamous for his micromanaging of many cultural institutions. He personally interfered in the writing of plays, novels, movies, and even music, enforcing a cultural homogeneity that encompassed his vision of the new “Soviet man.” The party tightly controlled all mediums of expression. John Murray explains that “[t]he regimented views appearing in the press of the thirties constituted the party line, and none other” (Murray 21).”

How much did the Bolsheviks need the Cheka and how well did they make use of it?

– E-International Relations

“The October Revolution of 1917 saw the overthrow of Kerensky’s Provisional Government and laid the foundations for the world’s first Communist state; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Seizing power through the revolution were the Bolsheviks, a faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, led by Vladimir Lenin. Paving the way for the Great Purges of Stalinist Russia, the Bolshevik’s solidified their power over Russia by utilising an efficient mechanism of state terror; the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, known simply as the ‘Cheka’.

The Formation of the Cheka

The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (to include, in 1918, ‘Profiteering and Power Abuse’) was established on 20th December 1917 as a temporary institution charged with investigating counter-revolutionary crimes. Initially lacking any judicial authority, without the power to arrest, try or punish individuals, the Cheka was intended to inherit the security responsibilities of the dissolved Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC). The Bolshevik-controlled Sovnarkom charged the Cheka to investigate and liquidate all attempts or actions connected with counter-revolution or sabotage, whether they were domestic or foreign in origin, and were expected to deliver the ‘criminals’ to Revolutionary Tribunals to face trial. However, from the very beginning the Cheka was an instrument of Bolshevik reinforcement; it was subordinated only to the Sovnarkom and not the multi-party All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VtsIK) for fear that this would allow other government factions to exercise control over this new secret police.

Following the abdication of the Tsar and the formation of a Provisional Government, the former secret police – the feared Okhrana – had been abolished and order had been temporarily maintained by People’s Militias. Therefore, the Bolshevik government lacked a centralised instrument of control that was pivotal if they hoped to retain authority and solidify their power base; the Cheka was born as the temporary tool to achieve this. It rapidly developed in response to threats to Bolshevik ascendancy; receiving powers of arrest within days, being assigned military units in January 1918 and in February 1918 was granted extra-judicial authority to conduct trials and the execution of their sentences (including the death penalty). At the end of 1917, the Cheka had twenty-three personnel, while in mid-1918 its ranks numbered over 10,000 and would continue to grow throughout its limited life.”